Postcards from Riverside: Highlights from the Biennial ARP Meeting
Leonard J. Simms
The second biennial stand-alone meeting of ARP was held June 16-18, 2011, in Riverside, CA. By all accounts, it was a successful meeting, even if you factor in the intermittent music coming from the house-flipping group who shared the convention center with us throughout the weekend! The purpose of this column is to describe some of the highlights of the meeting as seen through the eyes of the program chair. The local arrangements for the conference were organized by David Funder and his team at UC Riverside. The conference program was developed by a diverse slate of scholars, including myself as well as Colin DeYoung, Mike Furr, Sanjay Srivastava, Jennifer Tackett, and Simine Vazire.
The meeting was attended by about 200 participants, which is only slightly lower than the first stand-alone meeting in Evanston in 2009. The conference kicked off with a well-attended R workshop and Welcome Reception on Thursday afternoon and evening, followed by David Funder’s presidential address, “Persons and Situations, One More Time,” and the presentation of awards, including a Special Service Award to Brian Little, on Friday morning.
Submissions to the meeting were particularly strong, resulting in 12 accepted symposia covering a breadth of topics relevant to modern personality science, including interpersonal perception, structural issues, personality disorder, developmental and contextual forces, biological factors, and health outcomes. Indeed, the slate of accepted symposia was so strong that it was often difficult to select between sessions in any given time slot. Notably, a full third of submitted symposia had to be rejected due to space limitations. Indeed, several excellent symposia had to be rejected, which speaks to the vibrancy of our field going forward. In addition to symposia, 116 posters were presented across two well-attended poster sessions on Friday and Saturday evenings. Responses from the follow-up survey suggest that the vast majority of attendees were satisfied with the overall program and found it to be interesting and informative.
The program also included a relatively novel Data Blitz session comprised of fourteen short presentations limited to five minutes and three slides each. Although this was a new format for ARP, most follow-up survey responses were positive, suggesting that the format should have a place at future ARP meetings.
Two sessions were devoted to honoring the newest generation of personality scholars. The Tanaka Dissertation Award symposium featured Brian Connelly and Robert Latzman, the Tanaka Award winners from 2009 and 2010, respectively. The Rising Stars Symposium honored four graduate students—Erika Carlson, Jeremy Frimer, Livia Veselka, and Aidan Wright—who were selected, based on the quality of their poster abstracts and academic records, to present their work in a symposium format.
Finally, the conference was capped off with a Gala dinner at the beautiful and historic Mission Inn. In addition to the Gala, most follow-up survey respondents were happy with the ample opportunities offered for socializing, including the welcome reception, shared breakfasts and lunches, poster sessions, and coffee breaks.
Looking forward, planning is already underway for the next meeting in North Carolina in the summer of 2013. I know I’m looking forward to it!